CHAPTER III.
THE SECOND MRS. WILLIAM GODWIN.
The Blighted Being—Miss Jones’s Disappointment—The Blighted Being goes to Bath—He proposes to Miss Harriet Lee—Is rejected by Mrs. Reveley—Is accepted by Mary Jane Clairmont—Who was she?—Her Children by her first Marriage—Their Ages in 1801—Points of Resemblance in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Jane Clairmont—The Blighted Being marries Mary Jane Clairmont—Mr. Kegan Paul’s serious Misrepresentations of Claire’s Age—The Use made of this Misrepresentation—Mr. Kegan Paul convicted by his own Evidences—Charles Clairmont’s Boyhood—Godwin’s Regard for his second Wife—Misrepresentations touching the second Mrs. Godwin—Childhood of Mary and Claire—Education of Godwin’s Children and Step-children—Charles Clairmont’s Introduction to Free Thought—Godwin’s Care to withhold Mary from Free Thought—She is reared in Ignorance of her Mother’s Story—The Book-shop in Hanway Street—The Godwins of The Polygon—Their Migration to the City—The Godwins of Skinner Street.
By Mary Wollstonecraft’s death, Godwin was left with two motherless infants on his hands,—Fanny Imlay, three years and from four to five months old, and Mary, just ten days old. According to Mr. Kegan Paul, he was also left with a blighted existence. Let us see what Godwin did with his blighted existence in the years immediately following Mary Wollstonecraft’s death. For some time the infants in The Polygon, Somers Town, were cared for by Miss Louisa Jones, who would fain have become the step-mother of Mary Wollstonecraft’s legitimate child, and the tender guardian of Fanny.
Miss Jones, however, was not allowed to settle herself for life in this manner; for though he saw the necessity of finding a mother for the children, the widower with a blighted existence did not think highly of Miss Louisa.
Mary Wollstonecraft had been just six months in her grave; when the blighted being determined to woo one of the two Misses Lee, of Bath,—Sophia and Harriet Lee, daughters of John Lee, the Covent Garden actor, and authors of The Canterbury Tales; who, as writers with many readers, and school-mistresses with a flourishing seminary for young ladies, were notable personages in the City of Health and Invalids. Going to Bath in March, 1798, Godwin saw enough of Miss Harriet Lee, on four different occasions, to resolve on laying siege (by letters from London) to her mature affections. In April 1798 Miss Harriet Lee received the first of the letters from London, that were intended to induce her to dissolve partnership with her sister, and enter into a different kind of partnership with the author of Political Justice. Barely seven months had passed since Mary Wollstonecraft’s death, when her former and inconsolable husband is making love to another woman. This seems quick work for a blighted being. Is it usual for a blighted being to think of re-marriage so soon after bereavement? If so, blighted beings do not deserve more compassion than other widowers. But the suit was unsuccessful. There were several things to make Miss Harriet Lee think thrice before accepting William Godwin. There was his strong writing against the honourable estate into which he desired to lure Miss Harriet Lee; there was the unpleasant rumour that he had lived for months in Free Love with Mary Wollstonecraft; there were Mary Wollstonecraft’s two infants in The Polygon, Somers Town. Moreover, as a gentlewoman of elegant letters and a respectable schoolmistress, Mrs. Harriet Lee may have been prejudiced against the man who had admired the author of the Rights of Woman. Miss Harriet Lee thought thrice; and in August, 1798, the author of Political Justice knew he must look elsewhere for a step-mother to his little daughter.
What next with the blighted being? One of the most unpleasant of the several ladies, with whom Shelley associated in Italy, was a certain Mrs. Gisborne, whilom Mrs. Reveley, of whom he wrote to Peacock in August, 1819 (giving her a character not more applicable to her in her advanced middle age than in 1799):—‘Mrs. Gisborne is a sufficiently amiable and very accomplished woman; she is δημοκρατικη and αθεη—how far she may φιλανθρωπη I don’t know, for she is the antipodes of enthusiasm.’ On 6th July, 1799, this gentlewoman lost her first husband, who died no long while after showing much uneasiness at her intimacy with the blighted being. Within a month of Mr. Reveley’s death, Godwin pressed the widow to give him personal interviews, in order that he might show reason why she should hasten to become his wife;—a request that was declined by the widow, who, though an atheist, a democrat, and a cold-blooded creature, had some faint notions of decency, and of what was due to the memory even of the husband with whom she had lived unhappily. Is it usual for a blighted being to behave in this way? In something more than a year from his wife’s death to offer a married lady attention that stirs her husband to indignation, and in less than two years from the blighting bereavement to make an offer of marriage to this same lady, within a month of her husband’s death? In the name of all the domestic affections, what is it to be a blighted being? What is blight of heart and life? It must surely be something that impels an inconsolable widower to make an offer of marriage to nearly every other woman who crosses his path.
Instead of marrying the man of blighted life, Mrs. Reveley in May, 1800, gave herself in marriage to Mr. Gisborne, whose Slawkenbergian nose is curiously associated with Shelley’s own ‘little turn-up nose;’ her action in this matter being (Mr. Kegan Paul assures us) ‘a severe blow to Godwin, who had never abandoned the hope he might overcome the lady’s objections to a marriage with him!’ Twelve months later (May 1801), the blighted being was in love with Mrs. Mary Jane Clairmont, alias Clermont, whom he married in the following December,—just four years and three months from the day of Mary Wollstonecraft’s funeral.